Today, it feels much less like a celebration, or even a positive affirmation. It’s simply something we must remember sometimes.
Grief is an emotion I’m becoming acquainted with more and more over the past few years. And I get the sense it’s one I’ll be getting to know more as I get older. It’s as if a piece of you shifts — sometimes in big ways, but often, very small. And you cling to whatever is left. Whatever memory. Whatever feeling. Whatever identity. But it shifts, and suddenly you’re no longer the same. No longer the same smile. The same joy. The same lightness.
How can I dance when my world is falling apart? How can I go on when nothing will ever be the same? When the future is uncertain?
I wish I had the answer to grief. A balm for the heart. A remedy for the soul. Is there an antithesis to melancholy? Am I allowed to smile through the trauma? Am I allowed to live?
They say time is a thief, and that life is short — but it’s also long. I see it in the weathered faces of those older than me. Those who have been through storms. Tire eyes, weary souls, sadness in the body.
Is it even possible to dance in the rain? To find sprinkles of joy in the little things? Or simply in the daily act of living? Or does life steal it away from you, bit by bit, until there’s nothing left and you’re but a shadow of your former self?
On the horse, off the horse. Up, down. Years at a time. Decades.
Is life just a trauma? Are we all living to escape? Creating a fantasy?
What is reality, anyway?
Maybe that’s the secret no one tells you. That the storms don’t pass so much as they become part of you. That the weight you carry doesn’t disappear. It simply becomes more familiar.
And in that familiarity, something unexpected happens. You find yourself still standing. Still breathing. Still noticing the small things — the warmth of a cup of coffee in the morning, the way light falls through a window, the kindness of strangers.
What I’ve learned, in my years of life, is that we need to somehow learn to dance in the rain. Not because the rain stops. Not because the music is always beautiful. But because the alternative is letting the loss win.
So you move. Broken and in pieces. You smile again. You run again. You dance again. You find joy in the every day, and you thank the universe for simply being alive. For getting to experience the miracle of life. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
And perhaps, in the moving, you find more beauty than you ever knew.